Studies in identity: Software culture and folksonomic visualizations
Abstract:
Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" puts forward the idea that the form of a medium could be responsible for greater social change. This idea offers a different perspective on what role the Internet can play in our society. Lev Manovich says that we are living in a software society. Today, software plays a central role in shaping both the material elements and many of the immaterial structures which together make up “culture”, specifically the Digital Age.
Since the late 1980s, software has re-shaped cultural aspects of contemporary societies. In my research, I explore how software culture re-shapes our perception of our identity and investigate alternative ways of visualizing a social network in a folksonomic manner. My argument will be that the nature of our existence in the Digital Age can be understood and represented in a different form compared to the one structured according to taxonomy.
The focus of my investigation is on a single entity of a social network. This allows me to explore ideas of the folksonomy. The nodes and connectors within its architecture give the possibility of reshaping and visualizing the complexities of a social network.
“A 'folksonomy' is an informal and collaborative taxonomy.” Thomas Vander Wal, Folksonomy Coinage and Definition, 2007
Questions: - How software culture and folksonomic approach re-shape perception of our identities?
- How different can a social network be visualized?
Keywords: mapping, folksonomy, metadata, genealogy, music(al) notation, software culture, autopoiesis, networking, visualization
Bibliography: - McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. The MIT Press, 1994
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* This is an ongoing research theme of my practice based PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London.
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